Common Name: brown sedge Duration: Perennial Nativity: Native Lifeform: Graminoid General: Densely tufted perennial with stems 20-100 cm, without creeping rhizomes. Vegetative: Leaves borne on lower part of stem, summits u-shaped, sheaths white-hyaline, sometimes rounded and prolonged to 3 mm beyond collar, 3-5 blades per fertile stem, 6-45 cm long and 1-3 mm wide. Inflorescence: Densely to loosely aggregated with 4-11 spikes, broadly ovoid to ovoid, 1-3 cm long by 5.5-16 mm wide, green to brown, appearing fine textured; bracts at base of inflorescence scale like or bristlelike and shorter than inflorescence; pistillate scales white-hyaline or gold, ovate to broad ovate 2-3.5 mm, shorter than perigynia, margin white with obtuse to acuminate apex; perigynia ascending to spreading, green to straw colored or light brown and whitish, conspicuously 2-8 veined below, lance-ovate to ovate, plano-convex 2.5-4 mm long by 1-2 mm wide, margin flat, ciliate-serrulate on upper body, beak green to gold brown, flat; achenes elliptic to quadrate, 1-1.6 mm long. Ecology: Found in seasonally moist meadows or along streams from 3,500-9,500 ft (1067-2896 m); flowers May-August. Notes: This is perhaps the most common sedge in Arizona, existing over a wide elevational range and in a variety of wet habitats. Its inflorescence ranges from a more tightly clustered head of spikes, to one moderately elongate and irregular. It has small, plano-convex perigynia that are narrowly winged and veined, and when mature are substantially filled by the achene. It is most easily confused with Carex athrostachya, another sedge in the Ovales section, that typically has the majority of inflorescences on a plant with the first 2-3 inflorescence bracts leaflike and surpassing the head. Carex subfusca sometimes exhibits the trait of having long inflorescence bracts although not as frequently or regularly, but often enough to have caused much confusion in the past. The perigynia of Carex athrostachya are a little more elongate and flatter, and not filled so fully by the achene when mature. There are a number of other Ovales species in northern Arizona at higher elevations that are similar, but none that have been found yet in the Sonoran Desert Network. (Notes: Max Licher and Glenn Rink 2012) Ethnobotany: Unknown Etymology: Carex is the classical Latin name for the genus, while subfusca means darkish or brownish. Synonyms: Carex macloviana subsp. subfusca, Carex stenoptera, Carex agrostoides Editor: SBuckley, 2010